Although news reports last summer indicated that Garcia’s case was without precedent, it turns out that there was another similarly situated California law grad in 2010, Luis Perez, an “Undocumented UCLA law grad in a legal bind.“

A quick search of the Cal Bar’s website, however, didn’t turn up a Perez with a UCLA Law School sheepskin. So although he was profiled by the Los Angeles Times’ Hector Tobar, Perez’s status is unknown and unfortunately Tobar did not respond to an email query asking about Perez’s current circumstances. At the time of Tobar’s November 26, 2010 story, Perez hadn’t yet taken the February bar exam so it’s no known how he did on the exam.

One hopes, though, that Perez wasn’t haunted by the dreaded ‘famous last words’ when he told Tobar, “People used to tell me, ‘Why go to college if you can’t get a real job when you graduate.’ If I had listened to those people, I wouldn’t have done anything with my life.“

And in Florida, there’s the comparable case of Jose Godinez-Samperio. The state supreme court has been asked to rule on whether undocumented immigrants are eligible for admission to the Florida Bar, Case SC11-2568, which was brought by the Florida Board Of Bar Examiners concerning Jose Godinez-Samperio, a Florida State University College of Law graduate and undocumented immigrant.

[…] have posted many times on the topic of whether or not undocumented law graduates like Sergio Garcia, Cesar Vargas and Jose Godinez-Samperio can be licensed to practice in their respective state jurisdictions. Indeed, a year ago April, I […]

[…] any doubt that the California high court’s precedential decision today will also help other undocumented law graduates like Cesar Vargas and Jose Godinez-Samperio in other states. As I posted in May 2012, while California decisions are not dispositive in other […]